Tim is super excited to share a resource that he has been using in his Social Studies Classroom for years! As a secondary social studies teacher, who has no textbooks for his classroom (don't even ask how that happens...) he has had to become creative to show his students history and geography.

And, if you ask him now, he'd rather teach using pictures and real documents than have to use the textbook (although don't get him wrong, having a textbook would be nice, especially for guest teacher days and make-up work!).

Where does he find his materials to share with his students?

Of course, you can start with google and just type in whatever your subject is. That is the no-brainer. But, there is a great resource from the US National Archives that has lots and lots of those documents just ready to use in your classroom.

This works great for history classes and classes like geography (there are tons of great maps and the present day section offers a lot for non-history classes).

If you want some ideas on what to do with the pictures once you find one, take a look under the analysis worksheets section (on the right hand side of the page) and some great educators that work for the National Archives have provided some ideas for you and your classroom!

Tim loves to find historical pictures for his 8th grade US history classes and great pictures of history and everyday life for his Eastern Hemisphere 7th grade classes. The students really enjoy looking at these genuine artifacts. It really places them in the time period or foreign country!

So, you have the basic idea of why you want to do Levels of Understanding. But, how do you get started on it? How do you use it in your middle school classroom (or any classroom for that matter)? We explain how and why Tim uses them in his middle school social studies room!

For every day, or unit, Tim has an I Can statement. He reads his I Can statement at the beginning of every class, along with going over the class norms (rules) and the agenda for the day.

This day isn't the best example of his daily targets; they were taking a unit test! For his test he places this I Can on the board, but has the students look through all of the previous I Can's from the unit. Usually the I Can statements are the same for about a week or so - or however long the unit is. Tim likes to break long units that last weeks into mini-units and assess about every week or so.

The learning targets are kept on this form for the students to self-assess themselves daily.

At the end of class the students write down their learning target for the mini-unit (or the week, however you want to look at it). They then self-assess themselves on their understanding of the target and explain why they said what they did. This is their exit slip for class. It really helps Tim see what is going on inside each student's' brain. It also helps shape his lessons plans for the rest of the mini-unit and big unit.

Using these learning logs as a daily exit slip has really helped with classroom management in his middle school class. The students know what to expect the last 5 to 6 minutes of class. If you have every worked with middle schoolers (holly hormones batman) or in a high poverty school you know that routines are essential to classroom management.

How does Tim teach the levels; these can even be complex for adult learners? He has these great posters in his room that he and the students can reference throughout the lesson/unit.

Another twist on using these posters is to use them for any informal check-in with students. Tim loves to use them when explaining directions or a project!

To get these posters and the learning log that goes along with them, click here or on the picture below!